BARKING in the morning!
 

Hello!

I was hoping someone could give me some advice about our puppy Mariah who is now 9 months old and problems we are having with her barking in the morning!

Mariah is about 99% pee-pad trained. Originally our plan was to pee-pad train her because of the cold/snowy winter in WI and then in spring try to get her to go outside as well. For a variety of reasons including the fact that our neighbors have been breeding pit bulls that continuously come into our yard, as well as the fact that my children haven’t been as helpful as I would like with potty training, we have decided to continue with pee-pads only. Because originally we were going to have her go outside, we put her x-pen in our kitchen at first.

When we realized that the pee-pads were going to be a permanent part of our life we decided to move Mariah’s x-pen out of the kitchen. Her x-pen is now in a great spot right in the center of our house. Unfortunately she is having a hard time with the move. She has always gone to bed really well in her x-pen and slept all night.

The first night after moving her x-pen she barked ALL night. My husband was laying down with our daughter who had a nightmare and got up several times to comfort Mariah and give her treats. I didn’t know he was doing this and unfortunately I was doing the same thing. When we compared notes the next morning we realized our mistake! Between the two of us we had both been going to Mariah constantly the whole night…I’m surprised we didn’t bump into each other at some point during the night. Sigh….looking back its obvious Mariah thought she was being rewarded for all her barking! That is something we very purposely avoided doing since getting her.

Since then we have worked very hard at ignoring her barking during the night. We make sure she has had a very active day, a clean pee-pad, fresh food/water and she goes into the pen on her own (coaxed by a treat). She’s back to going to bed really well now and sleeps all night long. My son sometimes gets home 11-midnight and my husband often goes to work at 4:45 am and she does not bark when she hears either of them.

Unfortunately she IS waking up anywhere from 6:00 – 7:30 am and BARKS CONSTANTLY. During the week I usually get up at 6:30 am to get ready for work. Everyone else in the house wants to sleep in….but they can’t because she is BARKING! On the weekend or on days off, I would love to sleep in - but her BARKING just doesn’t stop. We’ve tried ear plugs, etc. but nothing is helping! I think ignoring her barking is helping a little bit. Two weeks ago she was BARKING at 6:00 am and (one weekend she didn’t stop till 8:30 am when I finally gave up and got her). This week she is getting up at about 7:30 am…so it’s getting a little better.

Next week my kids will start school and so we will all be getting up at about 6:30 am. During the last school year, we never took her out of her pen in the morning before school/work and she never barked. At that time she was still so young and potty training and we just didn’t have time to watch her carefully in the morning while rushing around getting ready for work/school. She never barked during that time so I think we will continue doing that. Hopefully she will start to get used to us being awake and her staying in her pen in the mornings and she will stop barking.

Other then continuing to ignore her barking does anyone have any advice?

What time in the evening are you putting your yorkie in the pen? It could just very well be she's ready for the day and wants to play. We had some trouble with a couple of our yorkie's similar to this - we've adjusted all but one (we think she's got some other issues ...). Anyway, I'm in the military so I'm up anywhere between 3am and 9am - if they are barking when I get up I let um out and either put them back in the pen or let them play in the living room.

Have you tried letting her sleep in your bedroom in the pen ? I know some of our dogs go bonkers just because they want to be near us... similar to my daughter when there's a bad storm.

I completely sympathize with you. My 4 month old pup only sleeps only for a few hours at night (my husband and I work during the day so he stays in his pen in our master bathroom while we're at work sleeping most of the day I assume). So at 6am sharp he barks at us until we wake up. We try to ignore him until about 6:45am when we actually get out of bed for work, but between 6am-6:45 we barely get any sleep because he barks constantly. Anyway, there's nothing we can do but ignore him until we get out of bed. I haven't been able to sleep in during a weekend since we've got him!!!